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Scott Adams has died

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Re: Scott Adams has died

#431

Post by Zigurd »

throw4436y54 wrote: post #243
jchallis wrote: post #188

Scott Adams died today. I want to acknowledge something complicated. He always felt culturally like family to me. His peaks—the biting humor about corporate absurdity, the writing on systems thinking and compounding habits, the clarity about the gap between what organizations say and what they do—unquestionably made me healthier, happier, and wealthier. If you worked in tech in the 90s and 2000s, Dilbert was a shared…

This comment reminds me of when I talked to a few Chinese friends about their thoughts on Mao. They all acknowledged the failed policies which led to famine, yet they also admired that he basically gave Chinese people their pride back. They related him to an uncle figure who became a mean drunk.

Sounds like what some American will say in two or three years, except for the excuse about being drunk.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#432

Post by teknopaul »

RajT88 wrote: post #393
spankalee wrote: post #290

I don't get "avoiding the ugliness" when someone dies. We need to acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better. Acting like "oh, he was trolling", or "it was just a small amount of hating Black people and women" is exactly how you get Steven Miller in the fucking White House. We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again, and that means calling out the bigotry even in death.

The thinking is that not "speaking ill of the dead" is not just respect, but doing anything else is pointless. You will not change them, and everyone present already made up their mind on their behavior.

Adams stated he was racist and thought that was aok.

I'd say calling him out as a racist is not exactly speaking ill of the dead in this case.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#433

Post by mooglevich »

Dilbert was great, and one of my favorite comics for a long long time. But yeah. Adams turned out to be kinda a jerk, at best. Of late, I've kinda concluded that no single piece of art or single artist is so great that I can't live a full life without it, regardless of how much I love said work or artist. I think individuals should have the right to read and enjoy Dilbert, but I also think if you don't like him and can't let that go, don't give your limited time and attention to the comic. There are lots of other great comics out there!

Re: Scott Adams has died

#434

Post by saubeidl »

pembrook wrote: post #412
spankalee wrote: post #290

I don't get "avoiding the ugliness" when someone dies. We need to acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better. Acting like "oh, he was trolling", or "it was just a small amount of hating Black people and women" is exactly how you get Steven Miller in the fucking White House. We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again, and that means calling out the bigotry even in death.

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Re: Scott Adams has died

#435

Post by ghaff »

razingeden wrote: post #286
jquery wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it’s more accurate to say Scott was always a far right troll and provocateur, but at some point he fell down a racist rabbit-hole. The book “The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh” shows how Scott Adams never cared about the plight of workers in the first place, using his own words. It was way ahead of its time, as the angry reviews from 1998 and 2000, back in Dilbert’s heyday, d…

Scott Adams’s boss at Pacbell in 1985 was (still) an SVP (and my boss) at AT&T in 2012. There was always a buzz and a whisper whenever someone was frustrated: “SHE’s the boss who inspired Dilbert.” Internally there was a saying that ATT stands for “Ask The Tentacles.” I haven’t really read the “funnies” since I was a kid but the few Dilbert comics I ever did read NAILED her org. I will never forget being paged 1,000…

As a product manager in the computer industry from the mid 80s into the 90s, Dilbert really resonated with me as satire--except, as you say, when it was barely satire. Not so much except for occasional later strips that really nailed some specific thing.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#436

Post by gwbas1c »

embedding-shape wrote: post #259
jchallis wrote: post #188

Scott Adams died today. I want to acknowledge something complicated. He always felt culturally like family to me. His peaks—the biting humor about corporate absurdity, the writing on systems thinking and compounding habits, the clarity about the gap between what organizations say and what they do—unquestionably made me healthier, happier, and wealthier. If you worked in tech in the 90s and 2000s, Dilbert was a shared…

> You don’t choose family Maybe it's because of my upbringing, and moving away from home when I was about 15, but why not? I think most people could actually "choose family" (or not, if it's better for you as individual). Why stick with people if they're mostly negative and have a negative impact on you? Just because you happen to share 0.0001% more DNA than any other human on the planet? Not to take away from the re…

>> You don’t choose family

> Maybe it's because of my upbringing, and moving away from home when I was about 15, but why not?

I'm sorry you had that experience.

There are very good reasons to leave / avoid family. I have an extended family and I've seen it all: One cousin recently had to kick her husband out for being an alcoholic; a different cousin was kicked out for being an alcoholic and met his 2nd wife in AA. Fortunately, my ultra-conservative aunt and uncle tolerate their transgender grandchild, but it creates a lot of friction between them and my cousin (transgender child's parent).

For most of us, our families are a positive experience. As we get older, we also learn that families are an exercise in learning to accept people as they are, and not as we wish they would be. We just can't go through life changing our people whenever they don't live up to what we want them to be.

As you get older, please try to find people who you can love unconditionally until you die.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#438

Post by ALittleLight »

spankalee wrote: post #290

I don't get "avoiding the ugliness" when someone dies. We need to acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better. Acting like "oh, he was trolling", or "it was just a small amount of hating Black people and women" is exactly how you get Steven Miller in the fucking White House. We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again, and that means calling out the bigotry even in death.

Ah, yes. Trump and friends are in the White House because nobody called them racist. Excellent political analysis.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#439

Post by dangus »

wussboy wrote: post #322
spankalee wrote: post #290

I don't get "avoiding the ugliness" when someone dies. We need to acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better. Acting like "oh, he was trolling", or "it was just a small amount of hating Black people and women" is exactly how you get Steven Miller in the fucking White House. We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again, and that means calling out the bigotry even in death.

Is "calling out the bigotry" useful? I feel like the Internet has been used for this purpose pretty consistently for the last 15 years. Is it effective? Is there less bigotry now than before? I would argue it has not in fact been useful, that making it shameful hasn't reduced it, and that calling it out in death is not useful in reducing it. I think we do it because it's easier than doing something useful and it make…

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Re: Scott Adams has died

#440

Post by jnwatson »

mrweasel wrote: post #182

I loved Dilbert, having worked for more than one Dilbert-like company the humor frequently resonated with me. How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, did he somehow become radicalized or was it perhaps medically induced, e.g. a stroke or something. It was incredibly sad to see him throw away his life's wo…

My working hypothesis is that some jobs are inherently isolating and that gradually leads to mental deviance. CEOs and cartoonists are similar in this way.

He didn't have peers to challenge him on anything, and after a couple decades of that, he was just high on his own supply. Elon Musk and Kanye West have the same issue.

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